Ernest Boulton and Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton

Also known as 'Stella, Star of the Strand' and sometimes as 'Lady Stella Clinton', she and Frederick Park ('Fanny') used to troll around town in drag, until they were arrested in 1870. They were prosecuted, with four others, the following year for 'conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence’ but the jury acquitted them.

The man seen with Stella in this portrait is her boyfriend, Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, a younger son of the Duke of Newcastle. He died - supposedly of scarlet fever but more probably by his own hand - shortly after Fanny and Stella were arrested.

Photographed by Oliver Sarony of Scarborough.

Fanny and Stella had toured the provinces in the late 1860s, appearing in a series of drawing room comedies, with Lord Arthur sometimes playing the part on stage of Stella's husband. This photograph was taken as a part of the publicity for one of these productions. Sarony, the photographer, subsequently appeared for the defence at the trial, since Fanny and Stella claimed that their antics were just an innocent extension of the characters they had played on stage.